Tonio, Son of the Sierras | Page 4

his
terrified horse, the general had been picked up senseless, to see no
more of fighting until Stone's River, eight months later, where with a
more seasoned command the same thing happened. And still he
persisted, when well of an ugly wound, and, while juniors in years and

length of service were now heading corps and divisions, with double
stars on their shoulders, and he had to begin again with a brigade, he
got into line for Chickamauga with his usual luck just within range of
the fatal gap left by a senior in command--the gap through which
poured the impetuous gray torrent of the Southland--and for the third
time everything crumbled away in spite of him, while he was left for
dead upon the field. He had done his best, as had other men, and had
fared only the worst. It was a case of three times and out. The impatient
North had no more use for names linked only with disaster. When,
finally exchanged, he limped back to duty, they put him on courts,
boards and other back-door business until the war was over, then sent
him to the Pacific Slope, with the blanket brevet of March, 1865, and
here he was, eight long years thereafter, "The General" by way of title,
without the command; silver leaves where once gleamed the stars on
his shoulders; silver streaks where once rippled chestnut and gold;
wrinkled of visage and withered in shank; kindly, patient, yet pathetic;
"functioning" a four-company post in a far-away desert, with grim
mountain chains on east and west, and waters on every side of him,
four long weeks and four thousand miles by mail route from home, and
much longer by sea; with nothing to do but send out scouts, sign papers,
sing an old song or two when the spirit moved him; with not a thing in
his soldier past to be ashamed of, nothing much in his soldier present to
rejoice in, nothing whatever in his soldier future to hope for, finding his
companionship in the comrades about him, and his sweetest comfort in
the unswerving love of a devoted wife, and their one unstinted pride
and delight, Lilian, their only daughter--their only surviving child.
Many of these eight years of what then was exile, while he, at first as a
major of foot, was campaigning in regions long since reclaimed from
savagery, and rusticating at frontier forts long since forgotten, Lilian
and her mother had dwelt in lodgings at "The Bay" that the child might
have the advantage of San Francisco's schools. Only once each year,
until of late, had he been able to visit them, usually at Christmas-tide,
but by every runner, courier, stage or post there came to them his
cheery letters, bearing such old-time, outlandish post-marks or
headings as "Lapwai," "Three Forks, Owyhee," and later "Hualpai," or
"Hassayampa," until finally it became mild, civilized, pacific, even

"Almy."
The uniform of a general, that the law had let him wear just as long in
peace as had been the war in years, was finally packed in camphorated
hope of resurrection, and the garb of actual rank resumed in 1870. He
could bear the title ad infinitum, but not the sign.
The silver leaf, as said, had come to replace the worn and tarnished
gold by '73, then mountain fever had seized and laid him by the heels,
and then all the Indians in Arizona, or the army women out of it, could
not dissuade Mrs. Archer from her duty. She and Lilian were the
heroines of a buckboard ride from Drum Barracks to the Colorado,
from the Colorado to Prescott, from Prescott down through wild and
tortuous cañons to and beyond the valley of the Verde--to the
wondering eyes of the waiting garrison and the welcoming arms of the
fond husband and father at Almy.
And this was but the week gone by, just before the "Newly Arrived"
had reached Prescott--just before "Hefty" Harris had returned from
scout. Not until this very morning--the first since their reunion of that
warm, yet winter's evening of the previous day--had the two classmates
set eyes on Miss Archer (it was as she rode away by her father's side
for a canter up the valley), and not until this late afternoon, as the sun
was dipping behind the black range of the Mazatzal, did they have
opportunity to speak with her.
Even as 'Tonio stood, silent and statuesque, while the doctor went on
record as to the rainfall of the Verde watershed, there came suddenly
into view, jogging quietly up the winding road from the lower ford,
three riders, followed by half a pack of lagging, yapping hounds--"The
Old Man," the maiden and the orderly--and all men on the wooden
porch of the unpainted mess building, rose